Some marine scientists have called for iron fertilization because of the metal’s crucial place in the aquatic food chain. Iron is the limiting nutrient in most parts of the oceans, meaning that its scarcity is the only thing standing in the way of faster growth.

Iron’s equivalent on land is nitrogen. Crop yields rose dramatically during the 20th century in part because of increased nitrogen fertilization.

The expedition team discovered the phenomenon of iron capture serendipitously. Edwards and her collaborators were studying deep-sea bacteria that catalyze the iron rusting reaction.

Of the possible reactions that support microbial communities on rocks, iron oxidation is one of the most important, Edwards explained.

Unfortunately, she added, “it’s probably the least well understood major metabolic pathway in the microbial world.”

The bacteria involved do not grow well in culture, so the researchers are using a range of molecular techniques to search for genes related to iron oxidation.

One major question involves the importance of bacteria-catalyzed oxidation versus the conventional rusting process. How much of the world’s iron is deposited with bacterial help? And how much escapes both bacteria and the natural oxidation process?

The sea floor holds the answer.

The samples were collected continuously using a remote sampling device deployed and retrieved from the research vessel Atlantis between May 16 and June 27, 2006.

The other team members were Brandy Toner of Woods Hole, who was first author on the Nature Geoscience study; Steven Manganini, Cara Santelli, Olivier Rouxel and Christopher German, also of Woods Hole; James Moffett, professor of biological sciences at USC; and Matthew Marcus of the Advanced Light Source at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

The research was supported by the National Science Foundation, NASA and the Department of Energy.

Katrina Edwards' Ocean Adventure Blog Starts Feb. 16

What’s it like to be on a ship in winter in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean? Katrina Edwards is about to find out – as will readers of her blog.

Edwards and other marine scientists led by Heiner Villinger of the University of Bremen are about to take a three-week cruise to the middle of nowhere – specifically, a point about 20 degrees north and three miles above a sediment-filled hollow on the sea floor known as North Pond.

There they plan to drill into the sea floor. Why? Edwards will explain when she starts her posts on Feb. 16 when the German research vessel RV Maria S. Merian sets off from Martinique. But expect musings about life in unlikely places, such as the basaltic rock that makes up the crust. “That’s where my heart lies: what’s going on with the basalt,” she said.

The vessel will be carrying 22 scientists, among them Edwards’ colleague Assistant Professor of Biological Sciences Wiebke Ziebis and postdoctoral researcher Nina Knab, as well as researchers from the University of Bremen, the Max Planck Institute, the University of North Carolina and Oregon State University. Other team members may join Edwards on the blog. Comments and questions are welcome. The National Science Foundation and German agencies funded the expedition.